Introduction:

Warp is one of the key technologies on Star Trek. With out warp drive it would take years to go between planets and that wouldn't make for very good TV. Since Star Trek first appeared on TV over 35 years ago we have literally seen hours and hours of warp travel and not supprisingly in those hours a few misconceptions have arisen. This article looks at several of these Myths about warp drive to set the record straight. I will, however not be discussing warp speed anomalies as that subject deserves its own article.

Warp Core Breaches:

The myth that Federation Warp Cores and anti-matter tanks are unstable and prone to explode with little or no provocation. The reason for the weak cores are either an inherent problem in matter/anti-matter (M/AM)technology or because the cores are poorly designed. Now on the surface this seems like a valid claim, after all we have seen many ships explode from core breaches or loss of M/AM containment but when one looks a little closer at the incidents of core trouble one can see that there isn't the claimed weakness of the core.

Warp Core Breach Basics:

The Warp core serves as the power source of the Warp drive and the ship. The Warp core is a reactor system that combines matter and anti-matter to produce energy. This is inturn used to create high energy plasma which is channelled throughout the ship for power and to the warp nacelles. The plasma is then channelled through special warp coils inside the nacelle that create subspace fields used to propel the ship at speeds faster than light. Because of the tremendous energy released in the M/AM reaction (especially considering the Über-matter in Star Trek) if the containment is breached in the core the ship will explode. Likewise if the anti-matter tanks lose containment the ship will explode from the energy released when the anti-matter comes in contact with the normal matter of the ship.

Past Warp Core Breaches: This is pretty self explanatory, this is a list of past warp core breaches that have been witnessed.

USS Yamato: In 2365 the sister ship to the Enterprise-D, the USS Yamato was infected by a computer virus that it contracted when it came in contact with an Iconian Probe. The virus was a computer program that was designed to work on Iconian computers and was incompatible so instead of doing its normal function it reeked havoc aboard the ship by affecting system after system. Unfortunately one of the effected systems was the anti-matter containment system. This cause the anti-matter to be released which predicably resulted in the destruction of the Yamato and the first loss of a Galaxy Class Starship.

USS Odyssey: In 2370 the Galaxy Class Starship Odyssey was sent into the Gamma Quadrant to rescue Capt. Sisko. During the mission the Odyssey was attacked by three Jem'Hadar Attack Ships. Dispite being a much larger ship with more powerful weapons and shields avalable and being supported by runabouts the Jem'Hadar had the upper hand due to the ablity of their weapons to pass through the shields of the Odyssey thereby removing the advantages the Galaxy class had over the battle bugs. The Odyssey suffered heavy damage and was attempting to retreat when one of the Jem'Hadar ships rammed the Odyssey. This cause a large hole to be torn in the engineering hull of the Odyssey which was just mere metres from the warp core. The Warp core then lost containment and destroyed the Odyssey.

USS Enterprise D: The Enterprise-D has histroicly had troubles with warp core breaches, ever being destroyed by them several times :). There have been three instances of Enterprise Warp Core breaches; in "Cause and Effect" caused by a collision of the USS Bozeman, a breach caused by a feed back loop in a power transfer beam between the Enterprise and a Romulan War bird in "Timescape", and finally in "Generations" the Enterprise suffered damage in a battle with a Kligion Bird of Prey.

Delta Flyer: In "Drive" the Delta Flyer participated in a star ship race hosted by one of the races of the Delta Quadrant. During the race the Flyer's warp core was sabutaged by a terrorist who wanted to destroy a new peace between two of the races participating in the race. The idea was that if the warp core blew the blast would destroy every thing in a million kilometres. In this case the core was sabotage by the rigging a fuel injector to leak veridium isotopes into the core. Thankfully the core was ejected and there were no casualties.

Klingon Cruiser: In the Voyager episode "Day of Honour" Voyager met a 70 year old klingon cruiser in the Delta Quadrant. The klingons had made the journey from the Alpha Quadrant because of concerns about corruption in the Klingion Empire. When the met with Voyager and learned about B'Elanna and the peace between the Empire and the Federation they set their ship's core to explode by introducing a large quantity of tachyons into the core. The idea was that Voyager would beam them out.

Near Misses:

This section looks at the times the Warp core nearly breached but didn't.

USS Enterprise D: The Enterprise has had several near misses to go along with the actual breaches. In "11001001" the Enterprise is hijacked by Bynars. To do this they rig the anti-matter pods to lose containment but fix it at the last minute. In doing so the got the Enterprise out of Starbase 74 with out having to fight their way out.

There was also the time when the Enterprise ran into a quantum filament which resulted in heavy damage through out the ship. This caused the polarity on the magnetic containment field to be reversed which would normally be easy to reverse except that the computer systems were not fuctioning. The field reversal slowly caused the field to lose strength until the containment field would no longer be sufficient to hold the anti-matter at bay. Luckily for the Enterprise Riker and Data were able to fix the problem.

Are Warp Cores Really Unstable?:

Now we have a list of seven past core breaches and two times where the warp core nearly exploded but didn't. Now lets look at each in depth.

We will start at the first the Yamato. As said before the Yamato was destroyed when an Iconian computer program infected the main computer of the Yamato and in its schizophrenia it caused the anti-matter containment to fail. Now is this the fault of the design or inherent instablity? No because it was a computer virus not a structural fault. On to the Odyssey. The Odyssey was rammed by a ship at full speed by a Jem'Hadar attack ship after being heavily damaged by shield penerating weapons. Now considering the level of damaged sustained I think it is safe to say that a core breach was unavoidable given the how much damage the core took.

Now lets look at the Enterpise core incedences. In "Cause and Effect" the Enterprise loses a nacelle in another colision. This is one of the times that the core of a starship does seem unstable. In fact we have in the past seen ships lose a nacelle with out a core breach, such as the Intrepid and Reliant. However none of those were the result of an impact of a ship, which might sugest that warp systems are more vunarable to kenetic energy than phaser or torpedo energy. Either way it is hard to quantify this incedent.

In Timescape the Enterprise is destroyed when a feedback loop in a power transpher beam causes the core to explode. This natualy begs the question, why wasn't there so sort of surge protector or other peice of hardwear to prevent such a thing from occuring? Either the amount of power was to much for such a device or it does not exist. Conisdering how over engineered much of the Federation is I think the former is much more likely, especailly since the singularity core of the D'Deridex class ship was very unstable. But no matter how you look at this it was not a problem with the warp core. At worst it is a flaw in the design of federation power trasher technology and at best it is an unavoidable accident.

Finally the famous and final destruction of the Enterprise-D at Veridian III. The Enterprise was attacked by a D-12 bird of prey which had learned of the shield modulation of the Enterprise which allowed them to modify their weapons to penetrate the shields. During the battle the Enterprise suffered heavy damage that caused the core to breach. This incedent does suggest that the core might be unstable considering that not one hit was seen to impact the warp core.

As for the Delta Flyer and the Klingon cuiser in Voyager they were both sabutaged so they don't provide any useful data. Same thing goes for "11001001". The lose of containment in "Desaster" was a side effect of a bizzar spacial phonomina and would have been easy to remedy if there was computer control over the containment fields. Once again there is no obvious weakness aparent in the Warp system of Federation Starships.

Now lets have a look at many ships that did take heavy damage but who's core didn't go critical:

1. NX-01: was litteraly blasted full of hole with no breach.
2. Intrepid and Reliant: both lost a necelle in battle with no core troubles. Not to mention the Reliant also took several hits to it's engineering section.
3. Potemkin and Hood: both took critial damage but neither's core blew.
4. Enterprise: took a several phaser blasts in the engineering section, on the same deck as core with out there being any concern of containment.
5. The Jenolan and Voyager: both crashed and yet neither of them had a core breach.
6. The Defiant: was shot up in FC, including extensive damage to a nacelle with out a breach.
7. Voyager: lost its outer hull and took heavy damage with out a core breach.
8. The Ent-E: Took one hell of heavy pounding from the Scimitar and rammed it with no breach.
This list was made by Bounty of SD.net which I have used but reworded it into my own words.

Notice that Many ships have taken huge amounts of damage and walked (actually flew) away with out losing their engine cores. This would seem to indicate that most Federation ships have extremely well designed engines.

Conclusion:

In conclusion Federation Starships overall are very well designed and can take very heavy damage with out risking a core breach. All the ships that have lost or have nearly lost core containment have been Galaxy Class ships, most notably the Enterprise-D. This would indicate that it is in fact the cores on Galaxy Class ships that are poorly designed. Another possibility is that the Enterprise alone has a bad core that for some reason was never replaced with a better one. Either way this is decidedly not a fleet wide problem but limited to a class or a single ship.

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